Page 10, 29th April 1983

29th April 1983

Page 10

Page 10, 29th April 1983 — Rejoice
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Locations: Victoria, London, Bristol

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Rejoice

Spring is to be sprung TAKE a joyful running jump into Spring (if it ever comes!) with Wynford Vaughan Thomas's Countryside Companion (just published by Hutchinson, Webb & Bower).
It ripples along with month by month descriptions of the charms of the British and Irish countryside with many erudite probings into some of the more intriguing mysteries of our island's natural history.
It also performs the signal service of reminding us of how much we owe to a man called General Pitt-Rivers who revolutionised archaeological research in this country and put all future excavators and explorers in his debt.
He was enabled to carry out his extensive pioneering work by inheriting a great estate in Wiltshire's Cranborne Chase. But, as Vaughan Thomas tells us, he had to change his name from Lane-Fox in order to inherit the estate.
One would have liked to hear more on this interesting point, the full story being that Augustus Henry Lane Fox inherited his extensive estates on the Wiltshire Downs from his great uncle, George Pitt, second Baron Rivers.
A "name-and-arms" clause in the relevant will stipulated that Lane Fox should, by royal licence, assume the surname of Pitt-Rivers.
Such "name-and-arms" clauses tend to cause havoc when Me is trying to figure out who is who. Why, for example, has the illustrious journalist, Peregrine Worsthorne, whose father's surname was Koch de Goorend, got a brother, the Lord Lieutenant of Lancashire, who is called Simon Townley?
A confusing double change of names was involved here.
Perry's father made the change by deed poll, Simon by royal licence (like Lane Fox) in order, for inheritance purposes, to assume the name and arms of Townley through descent from the eldest daughter of Charles Townley of Townley.
When I was once trying to explain this to a Texan friend, all he said was: "Now I know you're all mad!"
I mentioned this story to Perry before committing it to paper for fear he would mind such examples being given. INlaturally,
being an hommes due monde. he didn't.
But it is surprising how often they involve a joke. Most people have very little sense of humour about themselves.
Unsigned diary columns are often a hazard in this regard. People are always trying to guess the authorship and often get it wrong, thus causing much mischief. The confusion can be even worse than changes of names!
The ladies of the Chase
C:RANBORNE CHASE crops up this week in another connection. It is praised to the sky in a periodical called Inside Beigrayia, which caters for well-heeled "Sloane Rangers" and the like.
Cranborne Chase is now a fashionable girls' school near the lovely stretch of downs from which it takes its title. But it had not always had that name. Far from it; and thereby hangs a tale.
Soon after the war a young man called John Lord Arundel] of Wardour came to live in the house which came to be called Cranborne Chase in somewhat the same manner was
■ ‘, hat was once Paddockhurst became Worth Abbey.
For Cranborne Chase is also Wardour Castle and young John, the last of his line, intended to settle down there after a gallant war record and maintain, among other things, his family's Venerable Catholic and recusant tradition in this beautiful eighteenth century mansion with a Rotunda which,
when first built, was one of the wonders of the age.
The castle, moreover, contained one of the most sumptuous private chapels in England. (it still serves as the local Catholic church and is well worth a visit).
John Arundell was engaged well almost to a beautiful American girl. But then there entered a rather Brideshead element.
The young lord Arundell began getting scruples and nervous doubts compounded by illness. All too young, and all too sadly, and all too suddenly, he died, leaving no heir.
Fr Martin D'Arcy, who adored old English Catholic houses and was then this country's Jesuit Provincial, bought Wardour Castle for the Society.
But as he himself once told me, it turned out to be a magnificent "white elephant", and eventually had to be put back on the market.
But it is still a Catholic shrine of unique interest tucked away amid the unlikely surrounding of a smart boarding school for modern young ladies.
Friends in need
ARE THERE too many appeals now going on in the Catholic world? Most people would probably, if with regret, say: Yes.
The communal Catholic purse is not infinitely expandable and people wonder if all possible alternatives have been thoroughly examined before yet another giant appeal is launched among a generous community already heavily committed to third world and similar causes.
But there are of course exceptions and friends in real need find friends in true deed. Each must have his own list of priorities.
Fortunately for the London Oratory, it has many faithful friends as evidenced by last week's reception to launch its appeal, held in the magnificent Raphael Tapestry Court at the Victoria and Albert Museum.
Faith Brook, lately of the Irish RM, rubbed shoulders with diplomats, politicians and other
celebrities, not to mention the vital contingent of rank-and-file "friends".
At the choral recital which followed in the church itself, it was moving to spot among the congregation Mr Henry Washington, the Oratory's former musical director whose many years of service helped to produce one of London's finest choirs.
The first item, incidentally, was composed by a man who was himself married at the Oratory nearly a hundred years ago: Edward Elgar.
Perhaps it is just is well that the Hon Appeal Secretary, Fr Wilfrid Tighe, was once a Major in the Gunners. It has given him the necessary combination of
toughness and tenderheartedness for so arduous an assignment!
His exact address for this purpose, by the way (so as to avoid having to use a stamp) is The London Oratory Centenary Appeal, FREEPOST London SW7 2YZ.
Herald House artillery
IN AN interesting symposium recently published by Epworth Press The Testing of the Churches, 1932-1982) Fr John Coventry, SJ, contributes the section on the Catholic Church in this country.
In writing about the press the author says the Catholic. Herald "suffers under the difficulty of having to satisfy parish priests in order to be put on sale in churches, and yet to try to follow an independent line for a restricted readership, but soldiers on."
The soldiers in question salute the learned Jesuit. •
rONGRATULATIONS TO • -"' Miss June Newport, Administrator of the Clifton Catholic C'hildren's Society, who preached last Sunday from the pulpit of Bristol's famous church, St Mary on the Quay. Her sermon, being moving and to the point, evoked the sympathy and generosity of all who heard her. h was also short, which therefore made it doubly effective.




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